Evelyn Lau doesn't have an email address.

So when the Governor General Award-nominated writer mentored Kaitlin Fontana through the University of B.C.'s Booming Ground creative writing program, Lau sent Fontana feedback in old-fashioned letters.

But two years later, when Lau read Fontana's short memoir "The Flight Album" in the Canadian magazine The Walrus, about interning for a magazine in New York, Lau had to log on to her friend's email and instantly tell Fontana how impressed she was.

"She wrote this absolutely stunning piece... that I would have probably sacrificed a baby toe to have written myself," Lau said.

Now Lau is being honoured at the annual Mayor's Arts Awards, Nov. 24, and she's chosen 27-year-old Fontana as a promising writer to be honoured as well.

City council established the Mayor's Arts Awards in 2006 to recognize established and emerging artists in a variety of disciplines, including culinary, performing and visual arts. The awards also honour community members who make significant contributions to arts in our city. This year, Yosef Wosk will receive an award for his philanthropy, Betty Lou Phillips for her volunteerism and Rio Tinto Alcan for its business support.

Stephen Osborne was one of the three writers convened by the Alliance for Arts and Culture to choose this year's literary winner.

Osborne, publisher of Geist magazine and founder of what is now Arsenal Pulp Press, said the panel chose Lau for the high quality of her work and her support of young writers.

Lau's autobiographical bestseller, Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid, which was published when she was 18, set her course on the literary map. She's since published personal essays in Inside Out: Reflections on a Life So Far, a novel (Other Women), two books of short stories and five volumes of poetry, including this year's Living Under Plastic.

Lau called the mayor's award "meaningful" because she was chosen to receive it by writers she admires: Osborne, poet, novelist and editor Daphne Marlatt and playwright, editor, publisher and founder of Subterrain magazine, Brian Kaufman.

For the Mayor's Art Awards, Lau said she selected Fontana as the promising writer honouree because of her honest and personal approach to writing.

"Her forte is really in the personal essay," Lau said. "And the personal essays that I have read by her are all just really honest and vulnerable and beautifully done, and that's always what I've always tried to aspire to when I've written personal essays."

Fontana says she's long been a fan of Lau so being recognized by her is an "additional honour."

"[She's] a very courageous person and a courageous writer and I think it does take courage to be a writer in this world," Fontana said.

The resident of Cedar Cottage is grateful the city grants awards that shrink the gap between established and budding artists.

Fontana primarily writes non-fiction. She won a National Magazine Award for her personal essay about her father's death called "Sleeping with the Dead" and a creative non-fiction contest mounted by Event, a prestigious Canadian literary journal. Her book Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records will be released next fall.

To pay her bills, Fontana works as a music journalist, writing for SPIN, Rolling Stone and Exclaim! magazine. She has also performed across North America as an improviser and sketch comedian.

Fontana, who's quick on her feet but patient with words, is looking forward to meeting Lau, who she described as a "mysterious figure," at the award presentation at Club Five Sixty. It will be the first time the two have encountered one another in the flesh.

"I think she just prefers to be not in everyone's face," Fontana said. "She wouldn't be mentoring people through this program if she didn't want to be reaching out to the community, but I think she just wants it to be on her own terms."

To see a complete list of award winners or to make a reservation to attend the free event, see Vancouver.ca.

crossi@vancourier.com